Toward A New Black Cinema

January 12, 1986|By Clarence Page.

Some old Hollywood wise man--I`m sure it was a talent agent--once said that any publicity is good publicity. If so, Steven Spielberg`s ``The Color Purple`` must be reaping a bonanza of good publicity from black men who hate the movie.

Kwazi Geiggar, of the Coalition Against Black Exploitation, a 20-member Los Angeles group that monitors films and television shows with black themes, rapped it ruthlessly because ``it portrays blacks in an extremely negative light.``

Willis Edwards, of the Hollywood-Beverly Hills branch of the NAACP, was only slightly more sanguine. ``We`re happy that a lot of actors who happen to be black got to work and they did a fantastic job,`` he said. ``But for the black male, the movie is very degrading.``

And people on the street are talking about it. Oh, how they are talking about it. This is one of those rare films that plunge past hearts and minds to hit people right in the gender.

Countless black men have felt from its very beginning that the women`s liberation movement did not apply to them. How can the oppressed, they would say, be an oppressor?

That question is addressed quite frankly by black author Alice Walker in her Pulizer Prize-winning novel, a number-one paperback seller in Chicago since the release of Spielberg`s movie, which in its first week ranked fifth in the nation in gross receipts.

Frankly, I don`t think Spielberg expressed Walker`s feminist theme strongly enough. In an apparent pitch to a broader audience, Spielberg gives us a sweetened, pastel-toned version of the pungent book. The film had a commercial vision worthy of Walt Disney, without giving much insight into why the bad guys behave the way they do.

On the other hand, I know of nothing in black malehood that is so fragile that it will be undone by this movie. Like the book, it offers a frank and poignant portrayal of a woman`s struggle to overcome the torments of family abuse and win self-esteem for herself, in spite of the fact that she is four things almost no one in her world respects: homely, uneducated, black and female.

In her drive for self-improvement, Walker does not defame black men any more than television`s widely praised ``The Burning Bed`` defamed white men with its shocking-but-true tale of a woman`s revenge against her abusive husband.

I suspect that what truly has so many of my brethren quivering with rage is the frustration they feel over the small amount of influence we have in Hollywood after all these years.

For all the protests calling for a bigger piece of the pie, Hollywood answers with about one movie a year, at best, that is worthy of discussion. Last year it was ``A Soldier`s Story.`` If you count ``Beverly Hills Cop`` or ``Purple Rain`` among portraits of the Afro-American experience, it shows how little you know.

So I have a suggestion to those who do not like Hollywood`s movies: Make your own.

If is widely known in the industry that blacks, who collectively earn more than $200 billion a year, spend a greater share of their income on movies than whites do. But, with a few notable exceptions, we have not directed that box office clout.

Why not support black film-makers? It is not an impossible dream. Blacks have been making commercial movies since the silent film era. But the names of such once-great black producers and directors as Bill Foster, Oscar Micheaux or the brothers Noble and George Johnson have been almost lost. Even Spencer Williams, better known as ``Andy`` in television`s ``Amos `n` Andy,`` was a notable black director, with no help from Hollywood`s white power elite.

Stumbling blocks were thrown in the way of this burgeoning industry from the beginning, by white moviemakers and distributors who found racial prejudice to be a convenient and effective way to eliminate competition.

Today, independent black film-makers are trying to rebuild their industry, starting off with small budgets and lots of effort, here and overseas. In Chicago, Blacklite has shown its work at festivals for the last five years and other showings during the year at Chicago Filmmakers, an independent film support organization at 6 W. Hubbard St.

As a stepping stone in the development of a new black cinema, efforts like this will mean more than marches and pickets outside the gates of the big studios. But only if we support them.